IMAGINE RECEIVING A phone call out of the blue. Someone you don’t know says you’ve been chosen to receive $500,000 over the next five years – no strings attached – because the board members of a mysterious foundation believe in you.

Two East Bay residents got such a call last week. Saul Griffith, an engineer from Emeryville, and Clare Kreman, a conservation biologist who teaches in the department of environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley, have both been awarded prestigious MacArthur Foundation grants.

The MacArthur “genius” grants are awarded every year by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation – one of the largest private philanthropic foundations in the country.

The selection process is shrouded in mystery. An anonymous committee chooses fellows from among thousands of recommendations that the foundation receives every year.

The goal is to support creative people with the ability to change the world for the better. Fellows are chosen based on their “creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future.”

It is an eclectic bunch, to say the least.

This year’s winners include a forensic anthropologist, a spider silk biologist, a medieval historian and a blues musician.

Griffith, one of the East Bay winners, is the CEO of Squid Labs in Emeryville. Unlike most past East Bay winners, Griffith isn’t affiliated with one of the major universities.

Squid Labs is a company that Griffith founded while he was a graduate student at MIT. Griffith is credited with inventing a prototype that will make low-cost eyeglass lenses more available to people in rural and other underserved communities.

The tireless inventor has created a hand-powered human generator and is also the creator of Howtoons – a comic that teaches kids science and engineering through hands-on exercises.

Kremen, meanwhile, was recognized for her pioneering conservation initiative in Masaola National Park, Madagascar’s largest nature reserve.

She was also honored for her studies of the overlooked role of bees and other pollinators, which she found play a role in the growth of one-third of the food crops in the world.

We congratulate both East Bay MacArthur grant winners and wish them continued success.

Three women have told the New York Times that music mogul Russell Simmons raped them, the latest in a cascade of serious allegations of sexual misconduct against powerful men in entertainment, media, politics and elsewhere.